Leicester Sociologists in Ghana

I have received funding from the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach and the LIAS Archives and Special Collections Fellowship to undertake research on Norbert Elias and Illya Neustadt in Ghana during the 1950s and 1960s. They were both Head of Sociology at the University of Ghana, Accra.

(c) John Goodwin, University of Ghana, Accra, 2008.

My dear Ilya, I am writing this in the office which you know so well at five in the afternoon. It is warm, but the windows are open. I like the view from my windows, like almost everything else here. To my mind, this is one of the most beautiful universities in the world aesthetically speaking. The satisfaction I feel in walking or driving through the University compound may wear off. But at present the feeling of happiness of living in such surroundings persists (Elias to Neustadt 2/10/1962)

For the LIAS Fellowship, I am focused on Ilya Neustadt’s unpublished research in Ghana in the 1950s, particularly his field-based research – The Social and Economic Survey of Tema (see University of Leicester ULA/D57). However, purely by chance, during a recent trip to Germany, I discovered photographs of Ilya Neustadt in Ghana from the 1950s during the Tema fieldwork. The Deutsches Literaturarchiv have funded a trip to the archive so I can analyse these images in more detail.  

My approach to the images will be interdisciplinary. It will draw upon sociology, demography, history, social science history, African studies, and archival methods. The questions that will inform my analytical approach include:

• What do the pictures tell us about the fieldwork practices of both Elias and Neustadt?
• What are the aesthetics of the images? Style composition, camera position.
• What relational clues can be derived from the analysis of the images?
• Using biographical and multimodal perspectives (Smart 2007; van Leeuwen, 2011) what can we infer from the images? Are those represented in the images happy, sad, active, passive, related or unrelated, engaged, disengaged etc?

OUTPUTS

1. A working paper:  African Interlude: The Ghana Fieldwork: Considering Elias and Neustadt in Ghana (LIAS)
2. A 4* journal article: To be submitted by the end of 2026. Combining the images with an analysis of Neustadt’s Social and Economic Survey of Tema (LIAS)
3. A 4* photo essay: To be submitted by the end of 2026. The photo essay will analyse the images for Visual Studies (DLA).

African Art

The painting below was presented to Illya Neustadt once he had completed his time as Head of Sociology at Accra in 1958. At some point, Ilya gave the picture to his Doctor/GP in the UK. When the GP retired, he asked the then University Registrar, Keith Julian if they knew anyone interested in Ilya. Keith knew I had been researching Ilya, and so I now have it for safekeeping. A similar picture was given to Norbert Elias at the end of her term and is part of the estate of the late Cas Wouters.